Surrender is
really just acceptance: You surrender to, or accept, the way things arethe way
life is showing up right now. From the standpoint of the ego, surrender and
acceptance seem so difficult. Thats because the ego doesnt want to accept
life, and that will never change. You will never get the ego to accept life.
Resistance to acceptance is the egos natural state. When you are identified
with it, you feel resistance to life, but when you are not, you naturally accept
life. When you get in touch with the real you, accepting life just happens.

During your
day, you have many experiences of being surrendered to life as it is. You may
not notice those moments because you move through them so smoothly and
peacefully. The moments of resistance are the ones you notice because they make
you feel like you have a problem. You are taken farther out of the now as you
try to fix the problem by doing something to try to feel better, such as eating,
fantasizing, shopping, watching TV, or other escapist activities.

Escapist
activities are ones that cause us to become unconscious of our feelings,
including our feelings of resistance to life. We cope with feelings and other
aspects of life that we are resisting by avoiding the experience we are having
and doing something that will distract us and hopefully give us some pleasure.
We seek relief from the pain of resisting life by seeking pleasure. Thats how
the ego copes with life. The irony is that the ego is what creates the
resistance, and therefore the sufferingnot life. The egos solution to its own
resistance is to seek pleasure. When you are identified with the ego, you are
involved in this cycle of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.

Thats one
way of being in life, but theres another way. Surrender is the way out of this
cycle. When you surrender to life as it is, you experience a simple joy and
fullness thats much more satisfying than any pleasure you could experience. The
simple joy of just being is complete enough. Nothing needs to be added or
subtracted. The moment just flows into the next, without the need to change or
fix anything about it.

Surrender
allows you to experience life as it is unfolding, instead of experiencing your
resistance to it. When you are identified with the ego, you arent experiencing
life but, rather, your resistance to it. Youre actually missing the experience
of the now because youre not in the now but in your thoughts about the nowand
that is a very different experience.

Your
thoughts about the now are never like being in the now, even when your thoughts
are pleasant. Thoughts are just one aspect of the now, and if you ignore
everything else that is coming out of the now, youll have a very narrowand
dryexperience of life. Life cant be replaced by thoughts about it. The only
way to really experience life is to say yes to itto surrender to what is going
on right nowall of itnot just your thoughts about it. When you say no to it,
you get caught up in the minds story about the moment and its resistance, and
you suffer.

The way out
of this suffering is to notice the egos resistance to life and ignore it. Every
time that resistance arises, you notice it and then bring yourself back to the
experience you are having right here and nowhow your body is feeling, what you
are sensing, what you are being moved to do, and what intuitions are arising.
You just stay here in the now. What you discover is that the now feels good and
is rich and ever-changing. From the now, life is not experienced as a problem.
The mind is the only thing that makes life into a problem.

Once you see
that its possible to relegate the mind to the background and just enjoy the
moment, you will choose to do that more and more. Surrendering to life is not
hard at all. It happens simply and naturally when you stop paying attention to
your minds version of life and start paying attention to life itself as it is
coming out of the now. Theres something else to do besides think! And that is
to noticeto be aware of what is happening now. Look, feel, listen, sense, and
you will drop into the now.